Microsoft has jumped on Oracle's prosecution of Google to attack Android and promote Windows Phone 7, while revealing a limited US rollout for its mobile phone platform.
Even before Android's day in court, the chief financial officer of Microsoft's mobile phone group is reported to have taken Android's patent infringements as a …

COMMENTS

Oooo, this is a suprise...

NOT!

Microsoft sides with someone who, if successful, will benefit Microsoft. After the dust settles M$ will probably resume its rivalry with Oracle... probably on the Office front first, probably with patent infringement claims, and when tat fight dies down they can then move on to attack the database.

Database, really?

I don't know what patent portfolio sharing agreements MS has with Oracle, but I'd like to hear from you what on earth you think MS has patents on in the DB field that it could challenge Oracle on...

with the IP that Oracle previoulsy had, and that which they picked up with SUN, its hard to imagine anything except the other way around, Oracle pursuing MS over DB IP/Patents. But then again maybe your assertion is right, its just your logic thats wrong...

Hmmm..

You don't know what patent portfolio sharing agreements MS has with Oracle (if any) and I don't know what patents MS has in the database field, so we're both ignorant.

My logic though is sound, M$ is backing Oracle to help themselves by playing a supportive role in an attack on Google. A later attack on Oracle also makes sense since OOo and MySQL are direct competitors with MS Office and MS SQL, how that attack would proceed is unknown, but litigation would appear the be the tool of the day.

Didn't see that coming

Really?

No surprises there.

Essentially Google is trying to do an 'end run' around Java's licensing which Microsoft had tried and got their pee-pee spanked by Sun over the same issue. So what's good for the goose must be good for the gander.

In short, Microsoft is going to cry foul if Google gets away with their 'cheat' and then has a leg up on the competition. (Licensing costs are passed on to the consumer...)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Microsoft throwing FUD.

Sour Grapes or Counting the Chicks before they hatch?

Microsoft, by any measure, has lost the momentum it had with portable intelligent devices and is obviously using every thing it can dream up to disrupt any competitor sales. Android is a winner which is more than MS can claim for it's mobile applications.

Prejudging any court decision is a fools game. Microsoft should know, it has been found to have stolen other entities I.P. including the name "Internet Explorer", hard drive software and, famously, XML.

If MS was smart, Bulmer would tell this guy to shut up. He'll lose enough 'face' when he has to pay the Canadian company for the stolen software. At least Google wrote the software in dispute, MS just plagiarised their software.

MS has hidden costs too...

I find that the cost to replace all the hardware that I smash and/or defenestrate when an MS product just won't do what I tell it to do starts to add up pretty quickly. Configuration via 'Wizard' is irritating, slow, and mostly useless, but when the wizard doesn't do what it said, or when I need to re-run it 11 times, it's hard keep all my input devices stationary and on my desk.

When OSS software breaks, I have the option of trying to fix it, which, if nothing else, distracts me effectively.

Interesting

Poor poor Microsoft

...and all their limited resources. I guess they haven't gotten any better with their spaghetti-code/hairball approach to development. I'm just going to call it a hunch that Google and Apple probably have less people working on Android and iOS than Microsoft has working on Mobile 7, and they're putting out point releases at least every 6 months and major releases every year to year and a half.

Not saying that more is better, but damn... Microsoft is SLOOOW. After what, 2 years all Microsoft can come up with is an incomplete rollout? How sad :/

The real question is if this is going to be a ME/Vista or an XP/7. So far things seem to look more like Vista in my reading of it.

...Oh, and no surprise around their support of Oracle. Just surprised it took them this long.

MS might not be safe, too

Business Plan

Someone working for these large for-profit corporations a few years back definitely deserves their salary and bonuses. Consider: free software started getting better and better, and actually started to compete with commerical software. How could the big corporations fight this? Well, they can't be in business giving away their software, so they had to either stop the free software (difficult), or make it become non-free. How do you do that? Well, someone figured out (or lucked out on) the attack of intellectual property.

Pervert the patent system, perhaps by systematically flooding it with patents for things that shouldn't be patented, slowly twisting things around so that you can kill free software with patents. Also cultivate regions and individual courts to be supportive of IP lawsuits.

Perhaps this wasn't a big conspiracy by the for-profit corporations. Perhaps they just worked at many angles until they got one to work. I'm not sure I believe that.

What does the future hold? Will this mess collapse? Unfortunately, I doubt it, at least in most of the western world. Countries like the U.S. are simply too dependent on, and so supportive of, the large, for-profit corporations. They create lots of jobs, after all (so the official line goes). At some point it *must* collapse, because it holds back progress, but we might have a long wait.

not everything here is about open source

People have been screwing the patent system from way before Linux was a force to be reckoned with.

This is a good bit of old fashioned FUD, from Oracle(Sun) and M$, because their mobile technology is getting its lunch eaten by Android and Apple. The fact that the target, Java, is nominally open source, is really not that relevant. It's not against open source specifically, it's just the corporate lawyers trying to work an angle around the fact that Java is open source and they still have to find a patent-related bone to pick.

I wish Oracle(Sun) would just for once figure out if they want to free up Java or not. No stupid VM trick aspects as with this Android VM case. No equally stupid certification test licensing issues. Put up or shut up. Doubt this will happen.

M$, better laugh too loudly or........

Are Oracle stupid?

They have a vested interest in having android work out, they own Java, they own OpenOffice, if people use Linux based phones, they're products can be ported with relative ease, whereas Microsoft have their own database, their own office suit, their own C#, and if Google looses this one, then this is a market share that will partly go to Microsoft, and will kill java especially on mobile phones.

WP7 was my idea!

Therefore it infringes my patents!

Seriously, Microsoft should shut it's dirty mouth. They don't even have guts to sue, so they are sending Paul Allen to do their dirty job. Oracle is at least suing head to head, win or lose. Microsoft don't have guts to do that, so they are just FUDing. They look worse that patent trolls now. They are FUDing Linux with non-existent patents since 2003. Like SCO does with non-existing copyrights. EPIC FAIL.

You're s***ting me!

Unsurprising

Can't believe that crap like this is even reported by el reg, large scumbag supports wannabe larger scumbag spouting here say as fact in order to promote inadequate up and coming products before they wither away and die. gimme a break.

What would really make me smile

Windows Phone 7

I someone who just upgraded my T-Mobile phone, I can tell you exactly why I picked an Android phone (my-Touch slide) over a HTC HD2 (Windows phone) even though from a hardware standpoint, the HTC HD2 is a vastly superior phone. My choice was not because Android is "free". I, and everyone I know, pick Android phones overwhelmingly over Window phones even with a hardware handicap because Microsoft has always done a lousy job all the way around, especially in the mobile platform. I know that the HTC phone, despite having a processor with a 50% higher clock speed, will quickly become a slow virus laden POS due to Windows.

I heard:

"It is a gigantic loss period. We are very conscious that we do need market/sell/FUD potential customers, lock em' in tight. We can't piss away money forever, ... But we have the cash — it's a longer-term proposition that we pray holds profit, then we screw em' wholesale."